One might no
longer croak except to vote for King Log, or -- failing storks --
for Grover Cleveland; and even then could not be sure where King
Banker lurked behind. The costly education in politics had led to
political torpor. Every one did not share it. Clarence King and
John Hay were loyal Republicans who never for a moment conceived
that there could be merit in other ideals. With King, the feeling
was chiefly love of archaic races; sympathy with the negro and
Indian and corresponding dislike of their enemies; but with Hay,
party loyalty became a phase of being, a little like the loyalty
of a highly cultivated churchman to his Church. He saw all the
failings of the party, and still more keenly those of the
partisans; but he could not live outside. To Adams a Western
Democrat or a Western Republican, a city Democrat or a city
Republican, a W. C. Whitney or a J. G. Blaine, were actually the
same man, as far as their usefulness to the objects of King, Hay,
or Adams was concerned. They graded themselves as friends or
enemies not as Republicans or Democrats. To Hay, the difference
was that of being respectable or not.
Since 1879, King, Hay, and Adams had been inseparable. Step by
step, they had gone on in the closest sympathy, rather shunning
than inviting public position, until, in 1892, none of them held
any post at all.
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